How do I paste an object to a email?

I am currently using the IE 8 browser. I was trying to send an email with a photo and a clip art pasted to the body of the email instead of attached to the email. I copy the object and then click paste in the email, but all I see is the outline of the object but no photo or clip art. I then tried it using Chrome and Mozilla but got the same results. I know I was able to paste objects to emails in the past, has something changed?